Letters to the Editor
Etrigone
Published Letters: 155 Editor's Choice: 31
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@ Rose
[Read the article: The K Chronicles ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Keef's strip is odd, I'll admit. I'm big on weird, odd, surreal or just plain weird humor, and he hits at least one of those each time. I often get my daily supplement of irony here too.
No worries that it doesn't grok for you, but obvious it does for some of us. Er, not sure if that's a good thing or not.
"Yes officer, I'll go quietly while unless you count my SINGING! OH SAY CAN YOU SEE..."
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I keep forgetting...
[Read the article: The Toyota Prius outraces the Ford Explorer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I heard a story from a car show in 1997 or so. Toyota* was introducing this odd little car called a "hybrid". Apparently it would get better mileage in general and had some room for getting *really* good mileage and leveraging off both electric & ICE motor strengths.
A big 3 exec came up - I think Ford* - saw the car, said "whatever... now take a look at our newest SUV".
Very anecdotal, likely inaccurate with specifics & some generalities, but from The Way The World Looks it has a ring of (partial?) truth to it.
* Maybe it was Honda & another American car company, but Toyota & Ford work better for this story. :)
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Actually...
[Read the article: "Cloverfield"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think saying "this is another 9/11 movie" is, um... dwelling. Is any movie that has a boom-boom theme anywhere near NY going to be a 9/11 themed film? Does everyone who looks at me in a way I don't like anti-semitic or homophobic?
I kind of think of it as a homage, and a revisit, to something more akin to the original Godzilla. You know, the one that had him/it as an analog to an environmental effect - and not some monster mash, however fun that might be. The success for me of the original Godzilla was the focus on the effect on people. The nuclear attack on Japan was the kernel for the movie, but it addressed that kind of thing in a less specific way.
This could just as easily be any city; New York was just chosen as it has a lot of iconic bits that work better for cinematic purposes (and people don't care as much if LA or SF gets stomped). If there is a lesson at all in this I don't see it as 9/11 so much as when a place is trashed - New Orleans, Baghdad, Kabul, or New York - there are humans on the other side suffering.
Ridiculously naive and wishful thinking, but the next time someone thinks "we'll bomb them back to the stone age" I'd like them to consider what that really means.
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WRT "the 70s" & a musing
[Read the article: The gloomy gospel according to George Soros]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, that's hardly troubling. If the point is to concentrate on a larger timescale, even a decade of troubles isn't that big of a deal. Look closely enough at a smooth line of increase/decrease and you'll see all sorts of peaks and valleys - it's one of the reasons day-trading always looked rather futile to me. Sort of missing the forest for the trees, as it were.
IE, look at the US over many decades, not just the recent five. We weren't that big of a deal before WWII.
Last night, I had a dream (pun wrt MLK day unintentional). I was falling for some reason and saw the ground approaching. I got close enough and saw it was just a cloud - there was more falling to be done, a greater velocity to attain. Was that the ground I saw after passing through the ground... or another cloud?
As misanthropic as I can be, I hope my only vaguely analogical dream has nothing to with reality and is just a subconscious restatement of an old fear of heights. I'm about as reasonably safe as I can get, hardly invulnerable even if in generally rather low risk situations; there are still a whole lot of people who can get hurt in this morning-after-the-big-party.
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@ Zandru
[Read the article: Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo tourist spacecraft]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]>This is something that NASA should have come up with 35 years ago. You go, Sir Richard!
Actually, I believe they did. I was very much into NASA anything throughout the 70s, being just old enough to have seen & grok'ed what the moon landing Really Meant (tm), minus the cold war stuff.
All throughout the 70s I saw a number of designs for reusable craft, including a jet lift of a shuttle to where it took off on it's own. I still have the old Estes model rocket of one idea & the later rather disappointing actual shuttle.
Why didn't we go this way? I don't know precisely, but it's probably for lots of reasons. A gearing down & cutting back of NASA year after year, cost overruns, NASA's own internal problems, fallout from legitimate manned versus unmanned discussions - and probably more.
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I'm trying to remember...
[Read the article: Bill Gates and Wal-Mart want to save the world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]End of the 19th century & beginning of the 20th, peoples like Carnegie and other robber barons had amassed amazing fortunes via questionable tactics. A number of them decided later in life to better the world, spending their millions for anything from monuments to their names to actually helpful investments. A lot of their names & the things they set up are still around in some way, and the terrible ways they amassed those fortunes far less known.
I'm not sure if that's the best comparison for Gates et al, but for me years of making money the wrong way shouldn't be completely forgotten by some donations. Even if these folks put all of their money where there mouth is - which I do *not* expect or require - they did live rather well for some time and caused a whole lot of trouble for a whole lot of people.
Yeah, I prefer this over the alternative, and I do remember your article back then. I'm still not sure I believe this is much more than guilt money, the capitalist equivalent of confessing to your priest after your latest shenanigans.